


Material Witness—River [Set during Knockdown (3 x 13) and Limelight (6 x 13)]

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Material Witness [15]
Category: Castle
Genre: Christmas, F/M, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, Male-Female Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:34:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3578046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He doesn’t know why he’s sitting on the floor with his back against the bed and the ancient past scattered around him. Nostalgia, he supposes. The thought tugs his eyelids closed and he thinks of her wide smile. He things of warm red wool, snug under her chin, lending hardly needed color to her cheeks. He thinks about the tantalizing end of the braid hanging over her shoulder and her capable fingers busy with the laces of her skates. He remembers every detail and wants to kiss her again.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Set during Knockdown (3 x 13) and just after Limelight (6 x 13). 
> 
> A/N: This was an offshoot of the epilogue of “Silent Night, Ferret Night,” inspired by the diabolical BerkieLynn on FF.net

He tried hard to help me

You know, he put me at ease

And he loved me so naughty

Made me weak in the knees

Oh I wish I had a river

I could skate away on

— Joni Mitchell

 

* * *

 

 

_2011_

 

He wants to kiss her. There's nothing new about that. Urgency, maybe, because he can’t close his eyes without seeing her hunched over on the scuffed diner floor, a spray of terrible red fanning across her chest. He can’t close his eyes without hearing the air split with screams. 

 

But that’s not it. It’s not urgency that makes him want to slide the short distance to the floor and pull her into his arms. That was before, in the surreal light pouring through the shattered diner window. It was urgent, then. The desire to make her blood pound hard in her veins and feel her skin flush hot under his palms. To draw breath up and out of her. To give and take frigid January air and be grateful for the sting of cold. 

 

It was urgency, then. 

 

Right now, with a snapshot cradled in the palm of his hand and winter brilliant sun gilding her cheek, he wants to kiss her, and it’s not desperate. Not that way. 

 

He wants to kiss _this_ Kate. The here-and-now-Kate whose shoulder brushes his knee as she blushes and turns away from her back-then self. He wants to kiss her, slowly and softly, until she’s still and quiet and her eyes are open wide.

 

He wants to kiss this Kate and the one cradled in the palm of his hand. Kate here and now. Kate at nineteen. 

 

He wants to kiss her. 

 

* * *

 

 

He does kiss her. In urgency. In desperation. In something wholly apart from the nightmare unspooling around them in a cold, filthy alley. Another cold, filthy alley.  

 

When he knocks her hand away from her hip. When her jaw sets and her eyes flash and then go wide, he kisses her in answer.

 

_Then why do you keep coming back, Rick?_

 

He kisses _his_ Kate. Strong and brave and capable. So reckless with herself that he’d like to band his arms around her and carry her off. He’d like to tuck her away and keep her safe until she’ll see reason. Until she promises she’ll never try to do this alone.Until she sees that she doesn’t have to. 

 

She kisses him back. She kisses him the second time, and that’s his Kate, too. Practical and fierce. Rolling with it and _What The_ Hell, _Castle?_ all at once. 

 

She kisses him, and it’s the here-and-now Kate right up until it isn’t. Until a soft, surprised cry fills her mouth and he feels her knees go weak just when his do. For the space of something not long enough to call a moment it’s another Kate with her fingers buried in his hair and her mouth eager on his. 

 

For not quite a moment, it’s Kate, only just nineteen, kissing him with her whole, unwounded heart. 

 

* * *

 

 

He goes quietly for once. When she drops him at the loft, he moves to go quietly. Right away. 

 

Her eyes flick toward him, going wide when his fingers grasp the door handle, as if she’s astonished. His heart throbs, painful and clumsy and loud against his ribs, and he hopes for less than a breath that she’ll stop him. That she’ll lay her hands on him again or say something to keep the two of them here, just like this. But his eyes meet hers, and he sees she's grateful. She’s astonished, too. Regretful. He clings to that. But she’s grateful. Relieved.  

 

He goes quietly. 

 

* * *

 

He’s restless, finally at home, and thank God the loft his empty. He should wonder about that, but his insides are all breathless movement. He kissed her. He _kissed_ her, and he can’t get enough air. He can’t move fast or far enough to burn off any of this bubbling, fizzing _want_. 

 

He paces. He roots through things, looking for nothing at all. He climbs and descends and doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s worried—genuinely worried—that this is it. He’s finally come apart at the seams and he’ll never accomplish a single thing for the rest of his life because he _kissed_ her. 

 

The curtain is supposed to close on that, and when the lights come up again, everything is supposed to be different, but it’s not. She took his hand and they said too little and the world is much the same. Everything’s the same but him. 

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn’t really remember how he got here. The guest room, though it makes a painful, twisted kind of sense. She laid her head here once. She set out a sad scatter of travel-sized things on the nightstand. He’d tapped on the doorframe and she’d looked up from this very spot with a heavy-hearted smile. She’d paused in her work, clippings tags from the armful of sensible, off-the-rack clothes she’d picked to tide her over. She’d once slept safe inside these walls.  

 

But he doesn’t remember deciding on this. He doesn’t remember this particular climb of the stairs or raising up on his toes in the closet to slide the crawl space panel aside. He doesn’t remember that at all, but the sore spot on his shoulder tells him he must have wrestled this box down, though he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why he’s sitting on the floor with his back against the bed and the ancient past scattered around him. 

 

Nostalgia, he supposes. The thought tugs his eyelids closed and he thinks of her wide smile. He things of warm red wool, snug under her chin, lending hardly needed color to her cheeks. He thinks about the tantalizing end of the braid hanging over her shoulder and her capable fingers busy with the laces of her skates.He remembers every detail and wants to kiss her again. 

 

He’s in love with her. That’s no newer than the fact that he wants to kiss her. 

 

He’s been in love with her since the moment he turned to find her holding up her shield and looking a little too decidedly unimpressed by Richard Castle, Master of the Macabre. He’s been in love with her since the sight of her and the sound of her voice shook him to his very foundation and the words came for the first time in months. 

 

He’s in love with her, and there’s nothing new except the way it fills him now. Cracks in the foundation all over again and it’s not just wanting her here and admiring her there and craving how fierce she is. Craving the way she hates how he gets to her. He loves all of her with every part of him, for now and for then. For the rest of his life. 

 

He loves her, and he doesn’t know what this has to do with anything. Face-down pictures of himself that make him cringe. Pictures of him, too tall, too awkward, and always just wrong. He doesn’t know what ribbons and paper flowers and chipped ceramic ornaments have to do with this.  

 

He doesn’t know what it has to do with anything until his fingers close around something. It’s wedged in the corner at the very bottom. It’s half draped in paper programs and blurred purple mimeograph sheets. 

 

It’s heavy and round, about the size of a softball. It chimes as he fumbles it up the side of the box and on to his thigh. He remembers then. Hallways long enough to have a vanishing point. Disinfectant, foul on his tongue. The groan of wheelchair tires on polished tile and a gift shop. He remembers crouching in front of the glass case. Tugging at the frayed hem of his mother’s coat and tears in her eyes that he didn’t understand. 

 

It’s a music box. He remembers that, too. His fingers find the stiff wings of the key and twist. It’s stubborn at first. Silent, and it’s heartbreaking. Heartbreaking after all this. He unlatches the wide waist of it anyway. He swings the top up on the protesting hinge and sets it carefully on the floor between his knees. 

 

He remembers. It’s a mirrored figure-eight, two halves of a globe opened up, with wisps of snow, green leaves and holly berries in careful paint around the edges. His fingers find a seam in the rounded swell of one half. He presses hard and a drawer slides open, two tiny figures inside. He lifts them carefully, breathing an unspoken _hi_ to the pretty little girl, blushing for the boy and his smitten, painted-on smile. 

 

He sets them upright on the surface of the mirror. They snap to, the heavy, round bases beneath their skates giving into the tug of the magnets beneath. He worries at the key, gentler this time. Patient and hoping. The music begins, halting at first. Warbling as if it’s just woken, but smoothing out. It’s not a carol. It’s no canned Christmas tune, and it’s a little melancholy. Some lovely waltz he remembers, but doesn’t know the name of. It smooths out and and the little figures begin to move, twirling in circles, gliding together and apart, their hands outstretched. 

 

 

* * *

 

His mother finds him like that, who knows how long later. She finds him winding up the music box and watching the little skaters, their burst of dizzy motion slowing to nothing, then starting over again. 

 

“Richard.” She sinks to the bed behind him, leaning down to touch the bandage around his hand. 

 

“I punched someone.” He answers the question before she can ask. “A lot.” He looks up out of the corner of his eye, defensive, though her expression is mild. Neutral. The surest way to draw him out and she knows it. He knows it, but the words spill over anyway. “He was trying to kill her. This is . . . her mother’s case . . . it’s going to get her killed.” 

 

“. . . and?” She leans past him for the scatter of face-down photographs he’s brushed aside. “Darling, you’re not sitting here up to your chin in — ” she turns over a photo “ — 1978 because you and Beckett looked Death square in the eye.” She gives him a heavy look and adds, “Again.” 

 

“I kissed her.” It’s a relief to say it out loud. “She kissed me back.” _Such_ a relief and he’s fizzing all over again. “She kissed me, too.” 

 

“And did the two of you . . .” The sentence swerves at the last minute. A kindness, maybe, or just her being careful, however unlikely that seems. “ . . . talk?” 

 

“Do we ever?” He plucks one skater—the girl—from the mirror. He lifts her right out of a lazy, looping spiral as the music winds down again. 

 

“No,” his mother says quietly. “And that surprises me.” She’s prompting now. Goading, and he’d give in—he’d gladly pour his heart out, if he had any idea what to say. But his mother fills in the empty spaces. Quietly. Gently and it’s so unlike the two of them, it’s unnerving. “Darling, I’ve never known you to _dwell_ like this. On anything or anyone. Not without fighting for whatever it is you want.” She rests a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve seen you try, and I’ve seen you fail, but I’ve never seen you . . .” 

 

“I love her.” He cuts in. He curls the little figure in his fist hard enough to hurt. “I love her, and she’s with Josh, and she’s going to get herself killed, and . . .” He opens his hand, finger by finger. He strokes his thumb over the smart knit hat and along the braid swinging over her shoulder. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough.” 

 

“Richard . . .” 

 

“Not like this.”He holds up his bandaged hand. “I can . . . I will always follow her, whenever she . . .” He sets the girl down, nudging her close enough to the boy that their outstretched hands touch. “But I don’t know if I’m . . .” 

 

“You are, kiddo.” She wraps one arm around his shoulders from behind and insists. “Plenty brave.” 

 

* * *

 

His mother leaves him to it. Nostalgia and whatever this has to do with anything. But his back aches and his hand is throbbing and he should probably stare at some other ceiling a while. 

 

He cleans up. He stacks photos and slips them into folders. He piles slick, purple mimeograph blurs high and leaves the whole thing neater than he found it. This meager box of his past. He makes a space for the music box, a careful corner. 

 

He swings the two halves of the globe shut and tucks the boy and girl back away. He slides the drawer home, his lips moving in a wordless nonsense goodbye, but he hesitates. He hefts it in his good hand and finds he can’t quite set it in that careful corner. 

 

He puts it aside instead. On the nightstand that once held the sad scatter of her travel-sized things. He tries it out. A new home for this thing he remembers, but it doesn’t live there. It’s not meant to. He knows without question, right away. 

 

He tucks in the flaps of the box and boosts it back up into the black of the closet ceiling. He fumbles with aching fingers for the crawlspace panel and sets it back in place. He scoops up the music box. He takes it with him and flips off the light. 

 

He moves down the dark hall, his fingers brushing at his mother’s door. At Alexis’s, and he’s calmer now. Fizzing still. Brimming with nostalgia and too much else, but he’s steadier as he descends, the weight of the music box in his good hand. 

 

He stops at his desk, and his hands are reaching before he realizes what he’s doing. They’re reaching for scissors and tape and scarlet cellophane paper. They’re swaddling the round belly of the music box and twisting the paper at each end, tying off each twist with ribbon.

 

He rolls back in the desk chair, regarding the thing. It’s strange. Like a giant, happy piece of hard candy, and he still doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what this has to do with how he loves her. All of her now, and all of her then. He doesn’t know, but he carries it reverently to his own closet. He raises it high and finds a place for it among all the things that are hers. The things he’s never given her. 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She shakes her head, ignoring him mostly. Caught up, because she loves this, too. The unexpected rhythm to this. The way he’s still doling out these things more than a year on. The way he knows she loves presents, though she’d never say it in a million years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers: Set during Knockdown (3 x 13) and just after Limelight (6 x 13). 
> 
> A/N: This was an offshoot of the epilogue of “Silent Night, Ferret Night,” inspired by the diabolical BerkieLynn

He tried hard to help me

You know, he put me at ease

And he loved me so naughty

Made me weak in the knees

Oh I wish I had a river

I could skate away on

— Joni Mitchell

* * *

 

_2014_

 

“Easy, Kate.” The warning comes too late. She’s yanking at the zipper of her boot and it’s agony. “That’s . . . _ouch_.” He gives a sympathetic wince and glances up at her, asking permission, though his hands are already hovering over her calf. “Ok?”

 

“Just.” She blows out a hiss of air. “Go ahead, I just . . .” She braces, but he’s gentle and patient, and it’s no worse than an ache as he eases her foot from the boot. 

 

“We should get you in bed.” He’s already stooping to shoulder her arm up and wind his own around her waist. 

 

“It’s seven o’clock . . .” She bites the words off as she moves wrong and pain lances up her shin. 

 

“Yes. Seven o’clock and by 7:05, you’ll never get those skinny jeans past the swelling.” He has her halfway off the stool, talking all the while. “And, no, I’m not trying to get in your pants.” He thinks about it. “I’m not _just_ trying to get in your pants.” 

 

“I ruined our date.” She means to yell at him. She doesn’t _want_ to yell at him, but it’s safer than this. It’s safer than stupid tears pricking at her eyes, half pain and half disappointment. 

 

“Not ruined.” He stops them, halfway across the living room. He takes the weight of her body against his own. “We can have it here.” 

 

“I know.” She smiles against his shoulder. It’s hard not to when he’s dropping kisses on her skin and murmuring plans with that little-boy excitement she loves. “I wanted to go out, though.” She pulls back to look at him. “I like going out with you.” 

 

“Told you.” He grins. He dips suddenly out of view and sweeps an arm under her knees. He spins them in a circle and heads for the bedroom. “Told you you would.” 

 

He did tell her. Once they were “out.” Once his ring was on her finger and she was back in New York. Back on the job and everyone knew already, he thought they’d just fall into it. Normal nights out. Formal events with her on his arm. Him on hers. Couple things. 

 

He assumed, and she didn’t, and it was more than a little rough for a while. Her already rocky homecoming, and this new kind of friction. But they’d weathered it. She’d carried her point and in the end, the sullen declaration was mostly a joke. 

 

_Fine,_ he’d mumbled into the pillows. _Fine. But you’d like it._  

 

And she has. She does. She _really_ likes going out with him. They’ve had a ball thwarting the press since she sent the engagement announcement. They go bowling and hit diners and  second-run movies. They slip on hats and sunglasses and do their grocery shopping in the middle of the night when they’re fresh off a case. They do the most mundane things possible, and she loves it. She wanted that tonight. 

 

“We can go when it’s better, right?” She bites back a yelp as he packs the bag of peas into the depths of the pillow so it fits snug over swelling. 

 

“Better,” he repeats, giving the black and blue just visible at the edge of the bag a dubious look. “Not sure this’ll be better enough for ice skating before the rink closes for the season.” 

 

“The _season?”_ She’s practically shouting. It’s that or tears again. She’s disappointed all out of proportion, and her whole leg _aches_. “It’s only February!” 

 

“It’s a pretty bad sprain.” He smoothes his palm over the bare skin of her other leg. “It might be . . .” 

 

“It’s not broken.” She cuts him off. “It’s _not._ ” 

 

“Because you say so?” He’s smiling, but it’s a little hard. He hasn’t quite given up on the idea of the ER and X-rays and nonsense. 

 

“Because I did _not_ break my ankle tripping over some nineteen-year-old sleeping off a drunk underneath the chairs outside interrogation.” 

 

“Well, _I’m_ convinced.” 

 

He moves to push himself up. He’s annoyed. Worried, and she knows she’s being a pain in the ass. She grabs his hand. 

 

“It’s not broken. Look.” She bites her lip hard and rocks her foot side to side. She flexes and extends, rattling the peas. It hurts like hell—duller now underneath the burning cold numb—but everything moves. “I’m sorry.” 

 

“You don’t have to be . . .” 

 

“. . . I’m sorry I’m being all . . .” She talks over him. Waves a hand over herself. “All Beckett.” 

 

“Never be sorry for that.” 

 

He leans in to kiss her, over it already, but she’s still caught up in something. She catches his cheek in the curve of her palm. She stops him, their lips a few inches apart. 

 

“I really — “ she looks up at him, shy and sincere through her lashes “ — really wanted to go skating with you.” 

 

“Me too.” He kisses her sloppily, a loud smack that only catches the corner of her mouth. He’s pushing up and away. Bounding toward the closet. “Be right back.” 

 

She digs her fists into the mattress and tries to sit up. It tweaks her ankle in some unexpected way that squeezes her eyes closed and has her head knocking back hard against the headboard. 

 

“You ok?” She feels the bed sink next to her. His weight and something else. “Kate?” 

 

“Can I have . . .” She clears her throat. Licks dry lips and tries to make her voice work. “Scotch?” 

 

He frowns. “With the ibuprofen, you probably shouldn’t . . .” 

 

_“Castle!”_ She turns to him, letting herself look exactly as pathetic as she feels. 

 

“Scotch.” He scowls at her. “A _little_ scotch.” 

 

He goes. Her hand lands on the something else. The thing he brought with him, still weighing the mattress down beside her thigh. The bright red paper crackles as she fumbles it into her lap. It’s translucent, but he’s wound the stuff around and around so she can’t really see what’s inside. 

 

“For me?” She looks up as is steps halt in the doorway. 

 

“Of course for you.” He closes the distance to the bed and sets the tumbler down on the night stand. There’s a _very little_ scotch in it, but she’s on to other things now. She’s tugging at the ribbons, but he stays her hand. He gives her an odd look. “It’s a regift, kind of. And a little strange. But . . . topical.” 

 

She shakes her head, ignoring him mostly. Caught up, because she loves this, too. The unexpected rhythm to this. The way he’s still doling out these things more than a year on. The way he knows she loves presents, though she’d never say it in a million years.

 

“It’s . . . a ball?” She shoves the paper aside impatiently, turning the red sphere over and over in her hands. She finds the key and turns, delighted with the firm catch as it winds. The fingers of her other hand trace the seam around its middle and find the hook. She flips it loose and carefully spreads the two halves until they’re open flat. “A music box.” She smiles and nods her head along to the pretty little waltz, still frowning. Still puzzling. 

 

“There’s . . .” 

 

He reaches for something but she slaps his hand away. “Mine!” 

 

“Yours.” 

 

He rubs his fingers in mock indignation, but his eyes are dancing as her thumb sweeps over the side and she finds another seam. It’s an oblong, this one, and it gives when she presses. A long, wooden tongue slides out, and on it, two little figures, bundled up and facing one another, like they’ve just been stealing a kiss. 

 

“Oh!” She holds them up to the light. “He looks like you.” She studies the boy in his bright blue sweater with the striped, trailing scarf. He laughs and blushes and tries to steal it away. She fends him off, though. She guards the two of them with her palm and looks down at the silvery surface of the pond. “They skate, don’t they!” 

 

She sets them down, delighted by the solid click as the magnets connect. She winds the key tight and laughs out loud as they twirl, weaving in and out of each other’s figure eights, brushing hands and breaking away. 

 

“See?” He settles down to watch. “We can have our date right here. Skating and everything.” 

 

“Skating and everything,” she echoes. 

 

She looks up and he’s smiling at her. It’s warm and a little wounded. This is one of the harder ones. This gift, and she wonders why. If it’s them or something else or both. 

 

“A regift, though.” She makes a face like she minds. It takes the sting out, whatever it is and leaves warmth behind. She hides her own smile behind a sip of scotch. “Better be a good story.” 

 

“Oh, it is.” 

 

He clambers on to the bed beside her, clumsy and careful of her all at once. He roots around the half dozen pillows on his side of the bed and chooses something thin and flat. He lays it out between them, reaching to take the music box from her when it winds down. He sets it carefully on the pillow, winding it up tight again and waving his fingers at the tiny skaters as they set off. 

 

She sips her scotch, watching him expectantly, but he’s quiet a while. He curls an arm behind his head and turns half on his side. He watches, silent and thoughtful as the boy and girl glide around and around. 

 

“Did I ever tell you about my grandmother?” 

 

She blinks. The words are soft. Hardly louder than the music, but that’s not what surprises her. She almost laughs, wondering if it’s some kind of a joke, because they still go ‘round and ‘round about this. A year after Meredith and the land mine she left between them—a year of them _trying_ , together and separately—and he’s still just not inclined to talk about himself. 

 

She almost laughs, but he goes on before she can. He’s . . . somber, and she’s glad she didn’t. 

 

“I guess I wouldn’t have.” He reaches out, the brush of an apology over her knee. “I hardly knew her.” 

 

“But this . . .?” She waits a while before she says anything. She twirls her finger over the girl’s head. Over the boy’s, following their path. 

 

“This.” He shakes himself, like he’s startled. Like he forgot he was telling a story. “She and . . .” He turns something over in his mind. “My mother never said, but I got the feeling _her_ mother thought I was . . . a mistake.” 

 

“A mistake?” She keeps her voice level, but her scotch sloshes in the tumbler when she sets it down a little more firmly than she’d intended. 

 

“She was sick. For a long time,” he says, and she’s not quite sure he means it as an excuse. “Parkinson’s I think. But you know what it’s like trying to get any medical information out of my mother.” 

 

He’s babbling. He reaches out to wind the music box up again. She stills his hand. 

 

“You hardly knew her,” she prods gently. 

 

He nods something like a thank you. “When I was eight, she got sicker.” He gives her fingers a brief squeeze. He picks up the thread again. Out of order and not like him. It’s hard. “She was . . . funny. Sharp.” 

 

“You liked her?” She reaches for the key again. Vents the riled up feeling building up in her chest in a vicious turn or two. _Mistake._

 

“I liked her.” He rests a palm on her knee, like he knows she’s two seconds away from a dumb move that’ll wrench her ankle all over again. “And whatever hell she gave my mother. She . . . I think she liked me well enough.” He chuckles to himself. “She taught me to play cards. Poker.” 

 

“She _kind of_ taught you.” She can’t quite resist. He doesn’t pinch her, but he thinks about it and she’s glad to see the shadows lift from him a little. 

 

“She was in the hospital. Months it seemed like. We’d play for hours.” He laughs to himself, like something’s only just occurred to him. “I guess she was . . . babysitting? Or the nurses were.” 

 

He’s quiet again. He hums along with the waltz, his eyes fixed on nothing much. 

 

“She gave this to you?” She traces a delicate green leaf with one nail. 

 

“Other way around.” He stirs. He gives her a rueful smile. Another thank you for urging him on. “Christmas. I think . . . I must’ve known she was dying, and my mother was . . . neither of us was handling it well. I saw it in the gift shop, and I just got . . . insistent about it. My mother was furious, and I’m sure . . . It was dumb. It was a dumb thing.” 

 

The last notes of the waltz sound again. A pretty chime, hesitation, and one last note. The peak of the melody rings out and fades. 

 

“She died Christmas Day.” That, of all things, is matter of fact. It’s a hard memory. Not a happy one, but he’s past it. He looks up at her. “I told you it was strange.” 

 

“Strange,” she agrees, but that’s not exactly new for them. “But you’ve had it up there a while?” She nods toward the closet. 

 

“A while.” He leaves it at that and she wonders what he’s trying to get out of. She wonders why as she watches his face. His head rests on his arm. His eyes cloud and clear. He tips his chin up to meet her eyes, determined now. “Raglan. Lockwood,” he says. 

 

“The photos.” She stumbles a little over the words. “My mom’s photos. Those stupid skates.”  

 

She blushes as memory sweeps through her. Flowers and the warmth of sun and nearness to him. One kiss and another and not enough time or courage to say the things she should have in the back of the ambulance. 

 

“Wanted to ever since.” He presses up on one hand and leans over the music box. He kisses her. It’s shy, like he’s younger and she’s younger. It’s almost chaste, but just enough not quite. “Wanted to take you skating.” 

 

“You will.” She shifts on to her hip, wincing a little even though she’s careful. She slides her fingers into his hair and kisses him back. Gentle and answering in kind. Shy. “You will.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading


End file.
